Magical thrilling spooky moments in cinema

An Introduction.

Take
a step into a cinema hall, leave reality when you cross the entrance,
take a seat and wait. The ultimate magic moment of film is when
pictures appear in the dark, moving on the screen, changing form, and
creating visual effects out of nothing. Directors and special effect
artists make things possible that lay beyond reality. While narrated
stories and literature help to create visions through description,
film depictures them and creates images.

Cinema
is a modern tale. The monsters of childhood (or past) come alive and
haunt the protagonists on the screen, almost as a substitute for the
viewer. How do they meet their fears? How does film show fear? And is
there any escape? In literature most of these pictures are absolutely
personal. The reader must create these monsters in his head. Film
presents them as seen by the director. But even these monsters are
able to enter the thoughts of the viewers, to go deep inside.
Frankenstein,
Dracula,
Godzilla,
etc. have a common image of fear: the scar on the forehead of the
creature of Frankenstein,
the cape, coffin and teeth of the vampire lord or the saurian like
statue and his sound over Tokyo. This all generates dread in the head
of the people who share these cultural codes made by movies (even if
the original descriptions are written in books). Next to these
fear-creating-creatures, people are afraid of the disembodied. Ghosts
are a common motif in cinema.

Fairy
tales, myths, or literature adaptations are the main sources of
thrilling supernatural moments in cinema. Bram Stokers novels Dracula
or Frankenstein
create modern thrilling tales which are used all over the world.
Often, fairy tales are filmed for young consumers or as comedy. The
Czech TV-Serial Arabala
(CZ 1979-1981, Václav Vorlíček) lets the protagonists of popular
fairy tales appear in reality. While the black wizard Rumburak tries
to change the world of fairy tales by modification of the stories,
narrated in television as bedtime-stories, the other protagonists try
to live with the changing situation or to fight back to re-install
the written order. Here, we can detect critic of the power of visual
media: television has the ability to rewrite stories and to create
new realities by manipulation.

However,
not all stories are made for children: Terry Gilliam uses the stories
of The
Brothers Grimm
(USA 2005) to mix the life of these famous brothers with the tales
they collected through all the land. Herewith, he puts fiction into
the historical reality and shows a world of monsters as a real
possibility. The Korean film Hansel
and Gretel (South-Korea
2007, original 헨젤과
그레텔,
dir. Pil-Sung) uses the story of one of Grimm's fairy tale, but
locates it into today Korea. A young man has an accident deep in the
forest where he follows a lantern to find a hut. Inside this hut,
everything is fine, but as time goes by, the situation turns strange.
He wants to escape to the civilization, but it seems that there is no
way out. Pil-Sung's adaptation of this popular tale into a colorful
Korean story is disturbing, especially because the spectator expects
a narration he almost knows, but the story differs with every minute.

Screenshot 헨젤과
그레텔 (source
DVD)

The
tradition of yōkai (ghost, phantom, strange apparition) is narrated
in Japanese folk tales and has also found its way into film. At most,
Manga/ Anime or Japan-Horrorfilms use this kind of monsters who
sometimes are called mononoke. You can find some in Mononoke Hime
(Japan 1997, dir. Miyazaki), the Golden Bear Award-winning anime of
Miyazaki, in which the space of these mystic creatures is haunted by
the people who want to exploit the nature the yōkais live in. Only
the “Princess of Mononoke” can lead the yōkai troops against the
human invaders and re-unite the yōkai. In Sen to Chihiro no
Kamikakushi (Japan
2001, dir. Miyazaki) yōkai also appears in the
wonderland Chihiro
travels to. The cinema of the Ghibli studio is full of creatures like
Ponyo, Totoro, etc., but all of them have a kind
character and there is nothing to fear. Even the atomic dinosaur like
monster Godzilla, which stars in uncountable Japanese disaster
films, is not evil at all. There is more than one truth in Japanese
ghost stories.

The
supernatural is a popular topic in many films of the African and
Asian continent. In Ghana. the term Juju describes films in which
supernatural power is used to force own interests. Souleymane Cissé
tells in his film Yeelen (Mali 1987) an old Bambara epic, full
of magic power. Film takes over the role of history keepers/story
tellers of the West African societies: the griots. In West African
cinema, there is often the effect that the invisible is visualized in
the film. The spirit becomes a real surface and thus the belief of
its power increases.

The
Nigerian video industry produces many video serials. Some are
centered around love tales, some are crime stories, and many of these
films are supernatural. Carmela Garritano detects the effects
of neoliberal capitalism on the Nigerian society in these occult
stories of popular movies. Blood-money, Big Men and Zombies
leads you deep inside the Nigerian video industry.

“When
the shit hits the fan, the time to leave has come.” Swantje
Buddensiek explores the world of a Boer
family in Triomf, a novel of Marlene van Niekerk and how the cinema
adaption of director Michael Raeburn differs in its narrative style.
The story reveals about the decay of Apartheid in South Africa and
the ghosts of past that haunted back the different family members.
But no real ghost appears. Instead of, a kind of uncanny moments
haunt the protagonists. Swantje Buddensiek detects these ghosts in
the novel, but she misses them in the story's visualization.

Cen
Cheng describes the dread shown in Aftershock, one of the
few disaster films of China. This kind of genre is an alien tale in
the prosperous China story of technological progress. Her article No
dread for disasters shows the reader the plasticity of Chinese
life.

Brenda
Gardenour focuses in her article Left behind the phenomena
of Child Ghosts in three different movies: Rinne (Japan
2005), Dek Hor (Thailand 2006), and El
Orfanato (Spain 2007). She describes a journey into the dread of
the human mind.

A
step “Beyond the screen”, we are very happy to include this
article, goes Carrie Clanton who explores the Hauntology
beyond the cinema. She leads us to the uncanny moments of
electronic music.